CNN Anchor: ‘Our Rights Do Not Come From God’

(*)(*)(*)(*) that. 300 million people should be able to keep as many bees as they damn well please. Moreover, the regulation amounts to what it so often does: a payoff to the bureaucracy. It doesn't actually achieve anything other than the job of some parasite in the capital.

Take another hobby of mine: ATV riding. There is an ORV license which literally does nothing other than take your money. They provide no services, they have no workers, it's just a money drain. Because they can - because they're the ones with the jails and the guns.

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Government is supposed to be better than gangs and mafia. They're not supposed to extort protection money.

In any case - I don't expect any of this to change. Becoming a criminal is the best way to live in modern society. Embrace it. Break whatever laws you desire without regrets. May the better man win.

 

No we the people do through the Constitution we created which limits our government, that is why we should be careful in whom we elect. Don't expect a god to come down and protect us from government.

 

I noted you misquoting the DOI if you still refuse to admit you did then nada you have no point. There is no singular "our Creator" in the DOI nor in reality.

 

Actually, such freedom as the Constitution was intended to secure is a rediscovery of what the Israelites discarded in the days of Samuel.

You're under the impression "their Creator" is plural?

 

No, but it leaves it open to the individual and their are LOTS of individuals who have their own view of whom created them there is no singular creator in the phrase as some have attempted to claim with the "our Creator", for that phrase to be a restatement of what the DOI actually says it would have to read "our CreatorS".

But the bottom line is it doesn't say "by God".

 

What leaves what open to the individual?

Which is utterly irrelevant to the part of the DoI that's under discussion.

I suppose it may appear that way to ESL posters.

Doesn't matter, as it's obvious that "their Creator" and "Nature's God" are one and the same.

 

Lost? None. Have those rights been seriously repressed by government? Absolutely. The Patriot Act is a good example, but there are many, many more. Most laws are created for the purpose of restricting individual rights. That's not all bad, but it's far from all good either. If it was, we wouldn't debating issues on PF.

 

The original post used "their creator", I've also posted the direct text from the DOI for you, so again, what's your point? I mean, I'm not defending my position based on "OUR creator" am I? Hell NO! So, unless you have a intelligent perspective you can take your ego drivel and put it where the sun don't shine.

 

Then go away. We don't need you, nor your dumbass "news" anchors who haven't a clue.

 

Oh my , how nasty, thou believer!

Who is the "we" ? You and god? Do you speak for him?

I can speak for myself without having to have a "we" to give me back up.......I care not at all for YOUR cult of make believe.....

I don't have any news anchors....is that more of your make believe world ....LOL!

 

No, not everyone lives under government and if you think it is society which decides freedom you are living in a fantasy world.
Freedom is the natural state of man and is not a recent invention. Your entire line of thinking is skewed and based on lies and fantasy.

 

I think it was rhetorical statement. Don't look so literally at it.

 

Society does restrict individuals. If not through law, then through societal punishments. For example, if you area an atheist in a small Christian town, and you where public about it, you might not be invited to community events, given dirty looks, told your children cannot play with others, etc. There is always a societal consequence for being outside of the mold.

 

People weren't necessarily concerned about the slaves' humanity but they were concerned about slaves displacing them as a workforce. Slaves did a variety of skilled jobs and the slave owners carried hefty insurance policies on them. Only a handful of people at most gave a rat's butt about the morality of slavery. It was an economic issue. And even today the slave owners import millions of slaves to do their work instead of hiring free men for fair and decent wages.

 

Unless your gay, jewish, black, latino, a woman, a child that has been born......as long as you aren't any of those things christians have no problem with you.

 

Dumber words have never been spoken.

 

Nah pretty sure a few republicans with comments about legitemate rape and a child born of rape being a beautiful thing own that award.

 

Typical leftist drivel, definitely worth ignoring. Same stuff from these people, day in day out. Tune never changes. It's like, aintcha got a different trick or somethin'?

 

More of the same. What a hoot! Name all of those republicans.

 

Oh, so you're one of those compassionate, understanding, tolerant folks who hates Christian's. Got it.

 

"Of course you have a choice. Dear Leader insists upon it !" - Christopher Hitchens

Religion is completely opposed to freedom. The very idea that morals and laws must be based on divine command is giving up morality and the rule of law to the arbitrary whim of a dictator.

 

Whew, you are very confused, and I doubt I can help you, but at the very least you have to stop acting like the writers of the Declaration of Independence were establishing Absolute Truth for all of space and time. Their knowledge and influence was not quite that far reaching, though you are having a difficult time thinking outside their framework. But I would like to address some of your specific points:

Everyone wants to use words like "violate" and "oppress" in place of what's really going on with people of other times and cultures: their rights have been taken away. They do not have any rights. The word "oppress" implies an unjust execution of authority. But when our government takes a murder's rights away by sentencing him to prison, they aren't "oppressing" the convict's rights because there's nothing unjust about it - murderers deserve prison. Their loss of freedom - a so-called "inalienable" right - is perfectly just.

You are very confused. Atoms are part of the physical universe. Rights are not, they are philosophical concepts. Philosophical concepts aren't discovered, they're invented. When the philosophical concept of "inalienable rights" was invented and advanced, there was no cosmic guide to say it was the Absolute Truth across space and time; but some societies adopted it and it became the paradigm for people in those societies. You need to wake up and realize that you live in such a society, but not everyone else does.

I agree, sort of... it is our system, not the system from the beginning of mankind across all cultures. The Ottomans ruled with a very different system.

The exact opposite is true: if our rights were inalienable, there would be no reason for our country to exist the way it does - because our rights would (could) never be taken from us! It would be awesome! But because people and states take rights away from each other all the time, our government was established on the premise that some rights should be inalienable - that even the government itself shouldn't be allowed to take them away. It's only inside a society like this that someone's rights can be "violated" and justice served by penalizing the person who has violated another's rights.

As long as you think that, it proves you don't understand what I've been saying.

I'm only arguing that despotism exists, and has existed for eons; not that it's the correct moral framework for all societies. Somehow you're insisting that people have had "rights" despite their tragic lives under despotic rule to the contrary.

According to who? Where is it written in the cosmos that this is the case? You can say it all you want, but the citizens of DPRK do not have a right to property. It's a socialist state - there is no private property. Here's another example: the U.S. drove American Indians off their land and their property. What happened to their "inalienable" right to property? Well, for one thing, they considered the concept of owning land to be ridiculous. Why did the White Man's philosophical concept of "property rights" take precedence over the American Indians' concept of shared land? [Hint: see your next comment.]

Says who? You? The Cosmos? "Might makes right" is a perfect description of how many civilizations have operated in history (including the U.S. at times!), and how some societies operate today. I'm simply acknowledging that in some societies, the rule of law is "might makes right." Somehow you are denying that reality because you can't think outside the paradigm in which you were born.

You're confusing rights with moral authority. For example, I am morally outraged that men father children outside of marriage. But in this country, men have the right to do that. History has proven that rights aren't defined by morality.

Why? I'm perfectly fine with empowering the government to restrict people's right to own other people. It is a right that was never protected by the Constitution, and therefore it is subject to removal.

Over and over you say this, but it's nothing more than a nice concept unless it is shared by the rulers or the overwhelming majority of a society.

I don't know how you can say this. Women in the U.S. have the right to medically abort babies; but before 1973, only women in certain states had that right. Their rights changed simply by crossing a state border. So either you believe that by her nature a woman has the right to abort her baby, or you don't believe that is a "natural" right; but whichever side you're on, there is an overwhelming number of people who disagree. So who's correct? Where's the Cosmic guide that tells us whether or not women have that right?

Except that such rights get denied all the time. Read the Nineteenth Amendment. It came about because states were denying women the right to vote.

Yet we took away Osama bin Laden's right to live when we put a bullet in his head a couple years ago. Now according to you, bin Laden still had a right to live, and we only "oppressed" or "violated" his right. Continuing with your flawed reasoning, that means killing him was unjust and the U.S., or at least the trigger man, need to be held accountable. So how do you argue that no one needs to be held accountable for violating another man's "inalienable" right?

Maybe you should look up the definition of "limit."

 

This will be lost on most here, but there are rights which are not unalienable, suffrage being among them.

 

Absolutely. Human rights are conceived by humanity. Some people argue that means they can be taken away, which is true, but I argue that agreeing to a system of inalienable rights given by a god means no more can be added.

 

First I'm saying that the truths put forward by the writers of the DoI can't be extended to all mankind as Absolute Truth. They were just regular people who sought to establish a more just society based on philosophical concepts that we now take for granted. Just because the writers of the DoI said it was true didn't make it true for all people everywhere. It would be great if it did, but that doesn't reflect reality.

Second I'm saying that many people living outside U.S. jurisdiction simply don't have the rights we describe as "inalienable." I'm not saying they shouldn't have them, only that they don't. Further, some people inside the U.S. don't have them. Do non-citizens living in the U.S. have the right to pursue happiness? Do they have the right to own a gun? Do they have the right to vote? I don't think the State grants them these rights, but I do think the State takes these rights away, and in the case of non-citizens, we have empowered the State to take away their rights to vote, own guns, and in many cases pursue happiness within our borders.